Rationale

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The Emscher-Lippe region, where our partnership operates, is a particularly problematic labour market region. Situated in the north of the Ruhr area, it shares in all the problems of this former coal and steel industry region without, to date, having been able to participate sufficiently in the results of structural change: below is a summary outline of the main problems:

1. Like other cities and communities in the Ruhr area, municipalities in the Emscher-Lippe region were dominated by the coal and steel industry. During the past century the coal, steel and chemicals sectors – as well as the numerous related sub-supplier industries – formed a commercial complex dominated by heavy industry. While this complex no longer exists in the same form, it has spawned a multiplicity of after-effects. Structural change, in contrast, has only been partially successful. During the past 20 years, over half the industrial jobs in the region (primarily in mining, the chemicals sector, the steel industry and the garment industry) have been lost. On the other hand, efforts to create significant new employment in, for example, the services sector have been unsuccessful.

2. As a consequence of this development, the labour market in the Emscher-Lippe region is heavily gender-influenced. Jobs for women are primarily available in the clerical and social professions. Industry, which remains dominant, is still a male domain. Therefore, the Gelsenkirchen Labour Agency believes that women in the region are faced with the following problems:

• They often have serious difficulties finding a training or employment vacancy, and therefore limit themselves to just a few professions;

• They are more heavily affected by unemployment;

• They are often not employed in accordance with their qualifications, and have fewer promotion opportunities;

• They still have limited access to new technologies and the new future-centred areas of employment;

• They have problems re-entering the workplace after family-related employment breaks.

3. The gender-specific labour market structure in the Emscher-Lippe region also differs from the situation of other regions in the old federal states because the labour market is particularly unfavourable here. With regard to North Rhine Westphalia, the two Federal Labour Agency districts responsible for the Emscher-Lippe region – Gelsenkirchen and Recklinghausen – have recorded above-average unemployment rates. With an unemployment rate of around 20%, Gelsenkirchen has the highest unemployment of any city in North Rhine Westphalia. Young people of both sexes have significantly worse starting opportunities here than elsewhere. The vocational training reports issued during the past two years show that, of all cities in the old federal states, Gelsenkirchen has the worst supply-and-demand ratio in terms of apprenticeship places. Migrants are especially badly hit by this.

4. This is compounded by an unfavourable qualification structure with regard to both employed and unemployed people in the region. Due to the region’s industrial structure, dominated by the coal and steel industry, a relatively high proportion of those without employment have not completed any vocational training. This problem is continuing, since the proportion of those leaving school without obtaining a secondary modern school-leaving certificate is also above average. In contrast, the proportion of school leavers with higher educational qualifications is below the state average (in this regard the region displays a north-south gap in both respects: Gelsenkirchen presents the worst scenario). Schooling statistics also show that girls have, on average, better school leaving qualifications than boys. Thus, in future girls will form a large proportion of the potential workforce which is suitable for more demanding work. The region’s economy will have urgent need of them.

5. It is apparent that the region’s demographic development trends are significantly more unfavourable than the federal average. Recent studies show that the Ruhr area is losing more and more (generally highly qualified) residents as a result of outward migration, while the average age is constantly increasing. Already, the Ruhr area has an above-average proportion of pensioners, while the birth rate is comparatively low. According to the scenario outlined in the study “Germany 2020 – the nation’s demographic future”, issued by the Berlin World Population and Global Development Institute, in the future those people who are less mobile will remain behind: the poor, the old, and foreigners. Studies from eastern Germany show that young, highly qualified women are precisely those who are mobile and will leave regions with difficult labour market situations.

If the region is to avoid these scenarios it will require strategies which, for example, improve the qualification levels of workers while improving the educational situation of young people. It will require strategies to counter the professional exclusion mechanisms affecting migrants (with regard to both these sectors, there are already active strategic networks operating in the region in the context of federal programmes - StarRegio, BQF/BQN, XENOS and Learning Regions – as well as state programmes).

However, the Emscher-Lippe region also (and especially) requires strategies to counter the outward migration of qualified workers – and such strategies have been absent to date. Such strategies must, in particular, enable both young women and young men to reconcile their professional careers and their desire for children. With regard to, in particular, commercial future-centred sectors, gender mainstreaming not only represents an equal opportunities strategy, but also represents a labour market policy condition for successful structural change. After all, given the trends described, it is only with the aid of such strategies that declining human resources can be utilised on behalf on the economy and tied into the region. It is not easy to solve this problem in the Emscher-Lippe region, where the mindset relating to a gender-specific division of roles, dominated by the coal and steel industry structure, still remains largely unaltered.

6. Regional fields of competency offers a significant starting point for addressing the region’s problems. The Emscher-Lippe region is Germany’s third-largest chemical industry location. 25,000 people are employed in the chemicals sector and related industries. There are also significant growth prospects for the “energies of the future” sector. Improving equality of opportunity for women and men will therefore pay off in both sectors. Furthermore, however, it is clear that there is an urgent need to expand the competency field approach adopted in terms of structural policy to include the issue of equal opportunities. After all, our analysis shows that equality of opportunity is not simply a matter of individual justice: it is also a location factor affecting regional development.

Objective

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The activities of this Equal Development Partnership are intended to reduce gender-specific discrimination in the Emscher-Lippe region.

The regional fields of competency form the starting points, since employment and structural policy in the state of North Rhine Westphalia is increasingly focussed on the fields of competency specified by the regions. These fields of competency are intended to form regional growth cores. Thus, their selection has a significant impact on future job availability and earning opportunities for men and women in the region.

The issue of equal opportunities has, to date, not played any role in the debate regarding fields of competency. The fields of competency originally specified for the Emscher-Lippe region were: “New Chemicals“, “Energy – energies of the future“, “Industrial service“ and the “Leisure industry“. However, these fields of competency primarily provide jobs for men.

The addition of the “Health industry” field of competency, which has now taken place, will improve the gender balance in terms of available jobs. However, it should be noted that the choice of this new field of competency was not due to gender considerations, but simply to the fact that the health industry is generally considered to be a growth sector.

In order to achieve true equality of opportunity in the labour market, the definition of fields of competency must be expanded: it is vital that the issue of equality of opportunity be considered at the start, and that the selection of the relevant fields be subjected to gender mainstreaming criteria. Only thus can one ensure that the all a region’s fields of competency really present equal opportunities for men and women in the labour market.

Up to now, however, there has been no tool with which to measure the gender bias of fields of competency.

Gender monitoring of fields of competency is intended to create such a tool, facilitating an assessment of whether a field of competency primarily provides earning opportunities for women or man. Thus, when specifying fields of competency, the Emscher-Lippe region (and other regions in the future) can from the start determine the impact on equality of opportunity in the labour market.

Such an instrument is not merely of general social significance. It is especially important for those regions where the workforce potential (as in the Emscher-Lippe region) is threatened not only by demographic shifts, but also by the increased migration drain of young people. This migration drain is contributing significantly to the excessive ageing of the potential workforce.

Since investigations carried out in the New Federal States show that young women are especially mobile if they do not perceive career development opportunities in their own region, it is especially important to create equality of opportunity in the labour markets of the regions in question. The selection of fields of competency with this consideration in mind is an important steering tool in respect of labour market policy.

In addition, this EQUAL development partnership has set itself the goal of developing and testing models to reduce existing inequality of opportunity in two fields of competency in the Emscher-Lippe region on a pilot project basis:

“New chemicals” and “Energy – energies of the future” are two core fields of competency in the Emscher-Lippe region which primarily provide jobs for men. In each of these two sectors, women have specific problems finding and securing a job.

a) “New chemicals” field of competency:

The chemical industry provides around twenty-five thousand jobs in the Emscher-Lippe region.

Chemistry is traditionally a natural science with a high proportion of women. This applies to all levels of qualification, and to both the apprenticeship and the university education paths. However, technological developments in this sector means that qualifications acquired are rapidly devalued. This development used to have a particular impact on women whose CVs showed typical earnings interruptions: in the case of most women, career breaks are primarily due to childraising duties. Often, large companies and major corporations use internal operational arrangements to extend maternity or paternity breaks – and the people affected are primarily women – beyond the statutory periods. This exacerbates the de-qualification issue. Increasingly, however, men are also facing the problem of a discontinuous CV. This is because – on the one hand – men are also (increasingly) availing of paternity leave, and – on the other hand – because the number of time-limited employment contracts is increasing. These contracts do not always follow immediately upon one another.

Currently, adjustment qualifications relating to interrupted employment are primarily offered within companies. However, in the Emscher-Lippe region the availability of such opportunities is declining due to the reorganisation of the (internal) company sector, generally as a result of necessary cost saving measures.

However, in sectors with high levels of innovation potential but an absence of corresponding qualification options any prolonged career break will mean a final and forced career end. The absence of adjustment qualifications, and the drastic reduction [in what?], result in long-term unemployment despite a high qualification level.

In order to prevent this type of long-term unemployment, our development partnership intends linking the region’s existing educational facilities, and developing a qualification system which offers opportunities to secure professional qualifications during potential career interruptions, or to use such periods to acquire higher qualifications.

Where such continuous learning paths are not available, new modules must be developed in order to fill gaps. Together with the region’s companies, strategies for gender-sensitive personnel development must be found. Such strategies must consciously incorporate such qualification options. In this regard, co-operation with personnel planners and developers is as important as co-operation with works councils.

b) “Energy – energies of the future” field of competency:

In the “Energy – energies of the future” field of competency, however, the starting point is completely different: both the formal apprenticeships and the academic courses preparing for this area of work are in the industrial-technical sector, a male preserve. Thus, the approximately 30,000 jobs in the region are, in practical terms, inaccessible for women.

The experience gained during campaigns and pilot measures relating to the issue of “girls in male professions” shows that efforts to increase the proportion of women in traditional male professions (such as fitters, electricians and roofers) hold out little hope of success. However, the use of new environmentally-friendly technologies will not only facilitate the creation of future-proofed jobs, but will also result in new areas of work beyond the traditional professions. In these sectors, new approaches must be sought which will enable women to access these areas of work. This is important to ensure that young women, in particular, can find local future-centred employment, and to ensure that they can secure such employment, thus staying in the region rather than migrating away.

Our development partnership intends to link into the (documented) interest shown by young women in the area of environmental protection, and develop various qualification modules for schools and training facilities, in order to test whether such measures can make it easier to encourage young women to avail of appropriate training.

An additional goal of our development partnership is to identify new professional fields and areas which may also be of interest for women from other professions. For example, the “Energy – energies of the future” sector requires not only technical expertise, but also planning, co-ordination and consultancy skills: such skills must be available and/or strengthened. Women from commercial professions can have recourse to existing competencies, and can be prepared for new demands in this career field (see, for example, the issue of “consultancy competencies” in the “Energies of the future” sector, or the directives issued by the European Union in the energy sector). Our project should also incorporate the development of a new career path, allowing women to train as a “commercial employee in the energy sector” or as a commercial “energy consultant”.

All these measures are intended, in terms of perspectives, to remedy the equal opportunities deficits in the defined fields of competency. With regard to the fields newly identified as a result of gender monitoring, the equal opportunities issue should be incorporated into labour market and structural policy from the very beginning.